White house communication director hope hicks, hearing on capitol hill taking questions from the House Intelligence Committee as part of their investigation into russias meddling or perceived meddling. Here is the thing, everyone. This investigation has not come up with any hard evidence of any collusion of the Trump Campaign working with the russians. So is the president right, when he says this is nothing but one big, giant witchhunt . We are on it. But first, lets go back to the top story. Fed chair Jerome Powell, in his first testimony there as fed chair on capitol hill, is indicating some good things ahead. Those tax cuts are working. Maybe wages go up. Maybe that means the fed has to be more aggressive. Our own adam shapiro is following it right now. He has the latest. Hey, adam. Reporter trish, he talked about the economy. He talked about wages, expecting wages to accelerate. It is really about jobs. He pointed out in the opening testimony, in 2009, 15 unemployment for people without a college degree. High school graduates. 15 unemployment has fallen to 5 1 2 . They expect pace of inflation, job growth, all to accelerate as we go forward. This is one of the key points he made while testifying earlier today. It does feel to me that were, the next couple of years well be quite strong. You should see Strong Demand from consumers. You should see businesses investing. I would expect next two years on current path to be good years for the economy. Reporter but question a lot of investors have, will the fed become even more hawkish and raise Interest Rates faster than the gradual. We keep seeing gradual in their testimony in their statements further gradual increases. Right now were on track for three increases but as the fed temporary insinuated at the next meeting in march well get a new plot as they call it. We may find out they may be on track for more increases. For those looking for reinforcement. If you believe he is hawkish, the fed subsequently will be hawkish, listen to what the fed chair said right now. We reached the point where the risks are twosided now. We need to keep that into account. If we do get behind and, the market, economy does overheat, we dont see that now, hasten to add. If that happens, well have to raise rates faster. That raises the chances of a recession. Recessions tend to hit vulnerable populations the most. Reporter so a lost take lot of takeaways from the testimony as we head into the fed meeting in march. There will be fed rate increases. They dont want the economy to overheat and they expect wages to grow. They expect acceleration there but as of yet not quite what the fed would like at least as part of wage growth. Back to you. Trish thank you, adam. Down 126. Joining me with reaction, editor and publisher of the gartman letter, dennis gartman. Dennis, i would remind everybody it is healthy the fed think things are good enough they may have to increase rates. Not a bad idea as the fed says. As my good friend brian wesbury, says the economy is not a racehorse but a plow horse. It is plowing pleasantly forward. It is likely to continue further, which means rates have to go higher and the fed chairman has acknowledged that fact. I want to point out something i bring up a lot here, the law of unintended consequences when it comes to the Federal Reserve. In other words, the fed keeping money flowing, keeping rates so long for such a historic amount of time, they in some ways, dennis, i fear took away normal pushpull, yingyang of supply and demand equation. Yes. Trish in other words why should i do something today when i can do it tomorrow or next year because money will be just as cheap if not cheaper then. There will be Deflationary Forces not uncouple bent for that long period of time. The fed is trying to create inflation. Eventually that will show up. Thus far the productivity numbers have not and supply of labor from abroad continues to keep wages and, wages down, productivity up. So inflation has remained shockingly low for protracted period of time. Trish yes, shockingly low. You think of productivity, you think of creativity within the tech space. That is the big thing. Trish how much it has affected inflation. Think about productivity and creativity in the oil patch. What they have done in the oil patch over course of last five years. To think the United States soon will be number one producer of crude oil in the world. We just surpassed should should. Were going to catch russia in nottoodistant future because of fracking and horizontal drilling. It is not just computers. Tall in technology in the most old style economy. That is what impresses me. Trish i will go out on a limb be here. Well get inflation. A little. Trish that is good. That is healthy. We need inflation. For goodness sakes wages have not grown in 30 years. No. Trish we dont want it coming back, too quick, but a little bit is a good thing. Let me ask you, what did you think of Jerome Powell. What his testimony as fed chair . I think he did a great job. As we were be tag beforehand im surprised how somebody of that consequence can have some of the silliest questions asked of him and abide the questions without breaking into abject laughter or putting his head down and crying. I laugh were off screen we can do that this poor gentleman has to answer the questions if theyre important and to be acknowledged. I think he did a very firstrate job to be quite honest. Trish sadly too many members of congress do not understand economics. That is quite apparent when you see them question the fed chairman. Im always impressed by every fed chairmans willingness to deal with that. Yeah. Trish there was one particular example, dennis and i were talking offcamara before the show started that struck both of us as especially egregious. Here we go, Keith Ellison questioning Jerome Powell. Watch. Would you like to just talk about what it means what it would mean to take 700,000 people out of the economy . Lets just say they all went to mars for some reason . In fairness, congressman i am really not getting into the debate over daca. Im not going to do that. Im not asking you, sir, im asking you to talk the about economics of it. Let me ask you this. Let me see if you can answer this. What, what does it mean to have a group of people in their prime working years suddenly disappear from the economy . Well, all else being equal you would lose some productivity from that, some output from that. Okay. Thank you very. Trish yes, i won. Youre going to lose productivity. But heres the thing. Youre actually going to have a pretty big effect on wages by reducing the amount of labor there. Yes of course. Trish this has been the argument that too often poor and minority populations are hurt by the illegal immigrant workforce because the Illegal Immigrants are willing to work for a whole lot less money because theyre not here legally. That is what kept wage prices down, no question about that. I was impressed by the fed chairman, fed chairmans ability to explain that one, this is not the feds responsibility. The feds responsibility is to keep inflation in check, to keep it to 2 , keep the economy moving forward, to ask that not be questioned about daca, and to be questioned about five, six, seven times, to be able to say, okay, finally, if you take 700,000 people out. Equation, all things being otherwise equal it will probably have some damage to the economy but you and i would have had a hard time finally not saying enough. I was watching that you forgot the but, right . Yes, temporarily you will have a little bit of a pull back in productivity. You know what it actually would be . Rather healthy for all those people, i talk about the hourglass economy, all the time, dennis. All the people on the bottom that have been slipping as our middle class is squeezed. They have been. They have been. Trish they have a shot getting a higher wage because theyre not competing with the other labor force. Anyway, this is, an interesting well keep discussing this. I have a panel later. There was a case in chicago of a bakery had to fire all illegal workers. They hired legal americans come in. Guess what . They had to pay them more. They had to pay them a lot more. Trish dennis gartman, thank you very much. Lets get to the markets with nicole petraeus on floor of nyse. Looking at selloff. Down 120 near the lows of the session after starting higher. Adam johnson joins us, publisher, editor, founder of bullseye brief. First to you, why are we being led lower . Intel seeing some gains. But rest of the market not doing so well. Nicole . All right. I thought you were going to adam first. Pressure is on. Weve seen rising rates. Were not too far off session lows. Were still down 100 points. This is after two great days. Traders talking about very politicized talk there with mr. Powell, our new fed chief. They were too sort of taken aback by some of the questioning. Big picture here, commentary. That is all positive. Better economy Going Forward, wage growth Going Forward. Inflation. Well learn more about what the plots are Going Forward for three hikes or four hikes this year in march. So that is the big picture here. It is interesting to see some great names seeing highs. Amazon, netflix, nike, boeing, jpmorgan, all highs. The vix, this is my last point, had the biggest gain in more than two weeks right now, up at a level of about 18. That jumped. Rates moved higher. Traders taking in line of question, which was someone interesting. Back to you. Trish thank you so much, nicole. Over to adam johnson. Adam, you and i said this, i feel like ad nauseam now. A good economy actually has a fed that has to do its job to move rates higher at some point. I dont like the idea of, say lending money to the u. S. Government for 30 years and only getting 3 return on it. Isnt this just a return to normal . Yeah. Trish dont investors need to kind of accept that . Yes, that is exactly right, trish. If you look at the 30year mortgage it is so incredibly low still, i mean think about it this way, trish, if you were to go out borrow 100,000 on a 30year fixed, it would cost you 477 a month. That is so incredibly low. I remember when it was about 700 bucks. Whether rates go up three times this year, four times this year, it is still so low. We need to get back to normal. What we heard from chairman powell, we are getting back to normal. He gave us by the way, two years worth of runaway. Two years of employment are alive and well. We have wind behind us. Yes, rates get back to normal. Trish somewhat impressed, recently, we were all talking about here together, when we saw fed minutes this last week, it indicated that the fed was showing some trepidation. In other words they were nervous about whether or not the tax cuts would have the effect that washington wants them to have . Oh, they will. Trish i agree with you. But they were nervous about that they were concerned that maybe wages wouldnt be moving higher. But lets not forget, that the minutes were from a while ago. They were looking at some old data. We have had a lot of data updates since then. We sure have. Trish things that really do suggest that those tax cuts, that tax reform is starting to have an impact. How far will this impact be . How far will it go . Well, trish, consumer confidence, alltime high. Small business optimism, alltime high. Intention to hire, alltime high. I mean these are very bullish indicators. What theyre really speaking to, are the fundamentals of the economy, trish. We keep talking about the two es of earnings and employment. It is powerful to have highest number of americans ever gainfully employed, out there spending money. Add to that the fact that americans are getting a raise. 95 of taxpayers last week got a raise courtesy of tax cuts. Works out 4 to 5 . You add to that, some of those 1,000dollar, onetime bonuses. Trish, so powerful. The economy doing so well. I agree with the chairman, we have lot to look forward to as members of the economy and investors in the market. Trish nicole, i dont think we can underestimate the power of confidence. The power of Consumer Sentiment and the power of positivetive. In other words, my frustration during president obamas years every time we get maybe a little glimmer of hope in an economic report, he would always caution, you know, we have a long ways to go. Right. Trish we hear something very different right now. Politics aside, doesnt the positive message mean something to everyday americans, good news begets more good news. Thats right. Our president , who is the president of the United States of america, not one side of politics, the truth is, he said well be winning so much you will get tired of winning and that is the ultimate idea behind confidence and that started from late 2016 when he took, when he basically won that election. People started to feel more optimism, more opportunity, more productivity, more reinvestment. And finding out that optimism can actually build confidence and boost the economy and boost the markets. What is interesting though, powell certainly took a little bit of a cautionary tone, a little bit of hedging saying all the things in place should bring the final outcome but he did have to hedge a tiny bit there. I get it. I respect him for that. Anyway, good to see both of you. Adam, nicole. I want to point out. I was in nashville yesterday. Spoke to group of 7,000 wonderful, wonderful people down there. I talked to a lot of ceos while i was there. They were in the audience. What i heard over and over again from people was that theyre feeling better about things. That sentiment is better. They like less regulation. Their employees like getting more money in their paychecks. All of these things start to add up after a while and i do firmly believe that positive news helps. It puts people in a better frame of mind. We are positive people, arent we . White House Communications director hope hicks testifying today behind closed doors in the houses investigation into russian meddling, an investigation that still hasnt found a link between the Trump Campaign and russia. Where is that collusion everybody keeps talking about . Is the president right . Is this nothing but a mere witchhunt . Our Panel Debates it here next. Last years ad campaign was a success for choicehotels. Com badda book. Badda boom. This year, were taking it up a notch. So in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like, wow, maybe ill glow too if i book direct at choicehotels. Com. Who glows . Just say, badda book. Badda boom. Nobody glows. He gets it. Always the lowest price, guaranteed. Book now at choicehotels. Com but im not standing still. And with godaddy, ive made my ideas real. I made my own way, now its time to make yours. Everything is working, working, just like it should trish breaking today, white House Communications director hope hicks appearing before the House Intel Committee on that on going russia probe. Let me be clear. There are a whole lot of probes going on right now, several probes right now, none of them, not one, so far has found any evidence of collusion between the Trump Campaign and russia. But you know what they did find . Sadly enough that our Justice Department relied on that fake trump dossier to issue a fisa warrant for trump advisor carter page. No wonder the president is calling this a witchhunt. Is that indeed what it is . Does this deep state go a whole lot further than maybe any of us perhaps thought . We have just learned attorney general Jeff Sessions will look into this fisa abuse. Joining me right now for analysis, conservative review contributor tom borelli, and democratic strategist and new Jersey Senate candidate Democrat Michael star hopkins. Good to see you both. Tom, starting with you, here, what do you expect them to possibly learn from hope hicks today . Absolutely nothing, like has been found so far. Both congressional committees and special counsel mueller have found absolutely nothing. It is important just to stick with the fact the. The facts are they have found no evidence of collusion between the Trump Campaign and the russians. But what we do know is that democrats paid a Foreign Agent, Christopher Steele, to use propaganda to try to undermine President Trumps campaign. Thats a fact that cant be denied. Trish what is wild about it, is, it is, you know, perhaps propaganda that was fed to him about it russians themselves. So the collusion is on the democrats side, not the republican side. Could you imagine if it was reversed . Could you imagine if Trump Campaign hired a Foreign Agent to come up with propaganda and then that was used to influence the media . Remember Christopher Steele briefed the media. Trish right. In addition to trish right, there were members of the media that were out, you know yahoo news article. Trish using this. How do you respond to that, michael . If the tables were turned what would that have looked like . I got to say i love both of you guys this sounds kind of insane. We know from the democratic memo that the steele dossier was not basis for this investigation. Not true. We can trish tom, says that is not true. Not true, michael. Trish republican memo they did finish it. They did tell the judge that it was propaganda. Mccabe said if there was not the dossier there would be not application. Democrats didnt deny that in memo. Why am i here if im not going to get to talk. Speak the truth, then you can talk. Trish go ahead, michael. We mow know that papadopoulos conversations that started conversation. The individual working, carter page, we know about him working with the trump administration, because of previous investigationwith his ties to the kremlin. Trish wait, follow this through for a second. You still believe somehow that donald trump and his campaign got together with the russians and said what . I h